The Grand & the Visitor’s Tax:
Closing out 2022, the City of Paris has not completed the restoration promised for the Grand Theater over a decade ago; click the links below for verification; to see what the Paris Texas Chamber was warning about years ago . City council members, past and present, have wasted and are wasting a half-million dollars of the taxpayer’s money, creating a decade-plus long money-pit.
In the meantime, since 2008, city leaders who have made the worst possible decisions for Paris, have downplayed and cussed the Paris Texas Chamber of Commerce for confronting wrong decisions and actions, which have been and are detrimental to the equal economic progress of local families who want to improve their lives economically.
While the city demands perfection of others in meeting their demands, it ignores its own obligations and responsibilities. Simply because it cannot meet or carry-out its own actions and promises, it should not force others to waste decades of time and money in their efforts to restore their downtown properties: Think of the First National Bank and the Rodgers-Wade buildings.
Our local organizations, who claim to do community and economic development, refuse to consider any approach that would require a transparent examination of fairness – or their own bias. And really dislike others doing so . . .
To even try and excuse the result of this Grand Theater project should require one to examine their own bias and knowledge – and sanity.
If interested, here are a few links (and the years they were posted on our website):
aint_it_grand (from 2010)
at_the_grand (from 2012)